Caffè Nero — Restaurant in England

Very mixed feelings. On one hand I do like Caffe Nero, and I do like this particular building very much, it's historic and has character. But... the service is awful. I visited this weekend and last weekend, and both times they were just so, so slow. I saw a number of people giving up waiting, and the front of the store was a heaving mess of people just waiting for their drinks to be made. I have never known a coffee shop with such slow service, ever. It was really bad. Last weekend when I went in, the barista was more interested in talking to her colleague than doing her job, to the point where as she poured my espresso shot into the cup, she spilt a proportion of it as she wasn't looking at what she was doing. Pretty unforgivable for a barista, really, when coffee is the heart of their job. One other thing - the coffee here is served undrinkably hot. Even with a cardboard sleeve the cup was almost too hot to hold. Coffee shouldn't be that hot. Something is very wrong here. This branch needs some management attention and some staff retraining, as it's letting down the brand. And I rarely post bad reviews, but this...

I’ve worked in the hospitality industry and cafes for a while and if any of my managers saw this they would not be impressed. Firstly, queue going out the door because staff are taking ages to fulfill orders. When I did come to order, the lady (who handled my food and drinks) kept coughing and apologising because “she’s ill”. When I did get my food and drinks, my sandwiches (one bacon and one tomato and mozzarella) were on the same plate. As a vegetarian, I was obviously dissatisfied with this, but couldn’t be bothered to wait longer and have the other sandwich and coffees go cold. My mother went over to ask for a second plate and explained that she had put a meat sandwich and a veggie sandwich on the same plate, the lady who served me told her “it wasn’t an issue” and then heavily sighed when my mother still wanted the second plate. Coffee tastes bitter due to baristas not cleaning group head properly in between pulling shots. A staff member clearing tables tried to take my plate with half a sandwich still on it. Overall, really...

We visited on Mon 7th April. It looked as if the café was short staffed, the upstairs seats were closed off, which was no problem to us. The seats we wanted to use were dirty thinking that I was helping I asked for a brush to give them a clean, a woman did give them a wipe off, I finished it off before I sat down! I ordered two coffees, a hazelnut latte and a cappuccino. I asked if I could have sprinkles on my cappuccino, the same member of staff who had wiped my chair served me. She snapped at me saying I'd ordered two latte's, she took my mug away, made me a cappuccino and didn't speak to me throughout. The staff in all the other Nero's I've ever been in are always so pleasant and chatty, so this was something of a shock! I sat down with my coffee but was only able to drink half of it because it was too sweet; my cappuccino hadn't been made in a clean mug, she had tipped away the hazelnut latte and made my coffee in the same mug, a load of syrup was still in it! Very...